


Etymology

by towardsmorning



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alcohol, F/M, Ficlet Collection, Gen, M/M, Video Game Mechanics, reference to violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-15
Updated: 2012-12-10
Packaged: 2017-11-14 07:51:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 3,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/512982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/towardsmorning/pseuds/towardsmorning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt <a href="http://homesmut.dreamwidth.org/38154.html?thread=39550218">here</a>: random words from 'the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows' used as prompts.</p><p>"Prospit hasn't existed for years now, but Jade still dreams of it every night."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A dream I am learning to live with

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, it turns out that silly, made-up and vaguely pretentious random words are a really good way to get me wanting to write. Who knew? Expect me to add to these whenever I get stuck writing Homestuck.

_dream fever_

_n. the intense heat on the skin of a sleeping person, a radioactive byproduct of an idle mind humming with secret delusions which then vaporize when plunged into the cooling bath of reality, thus preventing a meltdown that could endanger those close by, who tolerate the risk because it gives them energy._

*

Prospit hasn't existed for years now, but Jade still dreams of it every night. She turns the question of why over in her mind, this way and that, a background process, but never comes up with an answer. Her eyes close each night and behind her lids lights up gold and orange, bursting into sight and shining like it never left. It's not the same of course. The feeling is muffled, like touching Dave's face through gloves in the winter, or stealing his sunglasses and laughing at how soft the world seems through them.

Her mind can't possibly be big enough to hold it all; she wonders if what she sees is memory or imagination. No matter how far she ventures she never finds gaps. Things make more sense than dreams of a person's own design ought to. The people, the halls, the mazes are all present and accounted for. The streets and her tower all gleam, untouched. Sometimes she even sees John, fast asleep, walls clean now, though she never recalls quite how she made her way to his room. He looks thirteen again, and she never has the urge to check if she does as well, but when she wakes up she thinks that might be the case.

Rose frets at the concept. John goes quiet if she asks, _do you?_. She wakes up more than once to see Dave by her side, propped on one elbow and watching her. The first three times he starts guiltily, but then he seems to stop caring when she tells him that it's fine, it's OK, she doesn't mind. Her only worry is that he sleep enough himself.

"Do you ever dream about Derse?" she asks him over breakfast, eyes bleary and still adjusting to the dimness of seven thirty AM in December. The cool thin light is so different to Prospit.

"Nah," Dave says. He looks a little lost, as much as Dave ever lets himself, so she squeezes his hand across the table.

"It's probably for the best," Jade reassures him.


	2. Skin

_contact high-five_

_n. an innocuous touch by someone just doing their job—a barber, yoga instructor or friendly waitress—that you enjoy more than you’d like to admit, a feeling of connection so stupefyingly simple that it cheapens the power of the written word, so that by the year 2025, aspiring novelists would be better off just giving people a hug._

*

Jane probably isn't all that touchy-feely by most people's standards, Roxy thinks. She's not got much of a frame of reference for this sort of thing, but she counts every touch and it's maybe three times every two hours they spend together on average. Her head scrolls through the figures easily, compiles them like code. A lot of those are slight and simply accidental brushes, a couple of them will be short and achingly sweet- a touch to her arm, her back, her shoulder. Once a day it might be a hug. Every other week or so Roxy will say something which makes Jane giggle in exasperation or sigh with unconcealed worry. Those are the best, because they sometimes mean a gentle kiss pressed to her hair.

Washington in July is warm. Jane wears short sleeves and Roxy wears as little as possible. Most of the time, it's skin to skin. Jane is soft and Roxy is birdlike, bones fragile and angles sharp. The contrast between them makes her sigh. They brush and bump against each other daily, and it's so simple and unthinking and companionable that Roxy wants to laugh with relief every time. They make a good set, she thinks. Roxy doesn't know how to do this, but Jane doesn't know how not to, a lifetime of affection bubbling out of her.

When she strifes with Jake for the fun of it and comes home with bloodied knuckles and a crusted split lip pulled back in a grin, Jane takes her hand delicately and Roxy wonders if you can die from warm skin and fingertips.

"I wish you'd look after yourself better," Jane says. "Let me get you a bandage."

"You're the best, Janey," Roxy says, and means it.


	3. Afterimage

_heartworm_

_n. a relationship or friendship that you can’t get out of your head, which you thought had faded long ago but is still somehow alive and unfinished, like an abandoned campsite whose smoldering embers still have the power to start a forest fire_

*

"Mom, do you know a man called Dirk?" Rose asks Roxy over breakfast, over the immaculately laid table that in no way reflects Roxy's thumping hangover. She knows that the shock is written across her face because Rose's eyes sharpen and focus after a mere second, mouth hidden as she raises a teacup to her lips, no doubt to disguise a smile.

"Why do you ask, honey?" she manages, busying herself with the piece of dry toast that she's trying to keep down.

"You mentioned him last night."

And just like that Roxy feels ten times worse. Most of that is the fact that she doesn't even remember Rose's presence last night, and that means she was a lot farther gone than usual; Rose shouldn't be seeing her in that state. It's not even that Roxy thinks it will break Rose down like she used to fear, bit by bit. Twelve years has been long enough to show Roxy that Rose doesn't break, she just withdraws. A little more every time, Roxy thinks with a wince.

A little of it is because Roxy does know a man named Dirk, a man who lives in Texas who rang her up fifteen years ago and wouldn't even tell her where he'd found the number. She doesn't know him well. Well enough to know he isn't who she'd been looking for, but not really _well._ The name still makes her stomach drop out every time and she swears she's never had a stronger sense of deja vu than when she heard his flat Texan accent over the phone. Something about the monotone.

"I used to," Roxy says, biting the last word off in a way she hopes will dissuade anything more. It's not true, she still hears from him when necessary, but it feels correct anyway. Rose raises an eyebrow- and Roxy swears she used to be able to look disdainful like that, but it just seems like so much effort when she's thirty and the only one to practice on is her daughter. But at least Rose doesn't ask again.


	4. /resync

_rubatosis_

_n. the unsettling awareness of your own heartbeat, whose tenuous muscular throbbing feels less like a metronome than a nervous ditty your heart is tapping to itself, the kind that people compulsively hum or sing while walking in complete darkness, as if to casually remind the outside world, I’m here, I’m here, I’m here._

*

He's pretty sure he doesn't actually have a heart anymore. In the literal sense, not some overwrought Grinch shit. Scratch that, he probably doesn't have organs period- he never gets hungry, though eating has yet to fuck him up in any way, and when he thinks to ask Jade she scrunches her face up and shakes her head. Her space powers have a lot of uses, most of them unexpected; turns out that trying to see his insides is one of the creepy ones.

"It's just sort of like static," she says, struggling to explain. He imagines he can feel a brief tingle in his abdomen as she cocks her head and scans him. "I think it's your sprite data, or something."

"I get it," he says. It had been a long shot anyway.

It's not a big deal, not like he thought a lot about his organs anyway. A lot easier to adjust to than not having legs was, and he barely even notices that anymore, just every now and again when he springs up and is thrown off balance. But either his brain didn't get the memo or just doesn't care- fuck, does he even have a brain to get its wires crossed? Because somewhere a wire or ten has definitely fucked up. He can still feel his heartbeat, steady as anything, can still _hear_ his heartbeat if the room is quiet and he really focuses. Steady and methodical, faster than he recalls it being before. Even when he's irritated or angry or nervous, it's steady as a clock, even when he's calm and chill it's fast as he vaguely thinks a bird's should be and he has to wonder, could he keep time by it? Maybe. Three beats a second, he thinks it is.

Not that he needs to. He runs on game time now, even in the freaky acid trip Jade is still optimistically calling 'space'. He just has to check his very literal internal clock. Maybe it's some kind of mechanism, or whatever the equivalent for data is. Maybe it's just whatever's left of his body being optimistic about its chances.

He finds he doesn't mind it all that much.


	5. Downpour

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is actually an attempt to try and get an internal voice down for Jake, so if anyone has any comments, I'd certainly appreciate them! This boy is impossible to write for, I swear.

_chrysalism_

_n. the amniotic tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm, listening to waves of rain pattering against the roof like an argument upstairs, whose muffled words are unintelligible but whose crackling release of built-up tension you understand perfectly._

*

When it rains, it pours.

Jake knows it's a figure of speech, but golly if it doesn't feel literal some days! Right now, the rain outside his room is coming down hard enough that it sounds like a constant rush of sound. He can just see it coming down outside the window, buckets and buckets of the stuff. If he stepped outside he'd be soaked through to the bone in under thirty seconds. Maybe in under ten.

It's actually rather a tempting thought, to go out and splash around for a while. A mighty silly one, of course, but tempting! He's pretty sure that practically counts as washing his clothes. Which is productive and therefore a perfectly good idea, come to think of it.

(Never mind the inevitable mud stains.)

But after a moment he dismisses the thought. The noise is making him drowsy and though he normally likes to think of himself as someone who throws off tiredness and all associated complaints in the name of adventure, he's already strifed unexpectedly with Brobot today. His extremities all ache and he has a bruise as big as the dickens on his chest. The rain is really very soothing to boot, and curled up on his bed as he is moving just sounds like a terrible idea.

He supposes a night off will hardly hurt.


	6. Endings

_ellipsism_

_n. sadness that you’ll never be able to know how history will turn out, that you’ll dutifully pass on the joke of being alive without ever learning the punchline—the name of the beneficiary of all human struggle, the sum of the final payout of every investment ever made in the future—which may not suit your sense of humor anyway and will probably involve how many people it takes to change a lightbulb._

*

Rust bloods don't live forever.

Of course, nobody does. Aradia understands that. But she thinks perhaps some people have more room to pretend otherwise than she does. If you're a blue blood who can look out for themselves, she thinks you could spend quite a while convinced you have sweeps and sweeps ahead of you and that nobody could bring you down. When you have dozens, plural, of sweeps to go then one or two passing is not much to worry about.

Aradia counts every day as it comes and goes, not bitterly or even carefully, just accurately. She keeps an eye on the clock whenever one is within her sightline. She digs up old ruins and holds their secrets up to the light, careful and reverant. Everything feels delicate and brittle enough that even the most disturbing artifact becomes gorgeous. There won't be much of a chance to watch things live and die in her future; even some of the fauna will easily outlive her, left to its own devices. She can only be there for one end of the deal. The latter end is her favourite, things suspended in time so long as you treat them right and don't crack them. It's nice to know how things turned out, even if the end isn't a particularly happy one.

Sometimes she thinks about her friends as she digs into the soil. She hopes their endings are good ones.


	7. Adjustment

_kairosclerosis_

_n. the moment you realize that you’re currently happy—consciously trying to savor the feeling—which prompts your intellect to identify it, pick it apart and put it in context, where it will slowly dissolve until it’s little more than an aftertaste._

*

Rose wakes up content and is immediately consumed with confusion at the sensation, albeit a slow and lazy type as she blinks herself awake.

The first three weeks on the meteor have been singularly stressful on everyone's parts. Between needing to adjust to the frankly uninteresting surroundings, being confronted with the sheer gap of time yawning ahead and some less than enjoyable encounters with dreambubbles, Rose doubts anyone is all that calm about their circumstances. In fact she knows they aren't. She's had to break up the arguments Kanaya has failed to, generally. As well as some that actually involved Kanaya. So no, people are not exactly happy in paradise, Rose thinks.

Except apparently her.

She ponders it as she rakes fingers through her hair, as she washes, as she re-dresses. It hasn't been so bad lately, Rose thinks, if one takes 'lately' to mean 'the last forty eight hours'. Hardly a winning streak. But they have been a less than unbearable forty eight hours, with people more or less staying out of fights, some interesting reading material found and a good nights' sleep. Even the environment is gradually becoming something she is used to, a place she thinks doesn't strain her eyes from monotony anymore.

Put like that it doesn't seem like much at all. Perhaps the next three years ( _two years, forty eight weeks and six days_ ) will lower her standards, she thinks with a little disdain. The thought isn't very appealing. She feels less content now, having realized how much these tiny things already feel like generous gifts- nobody shouting, nobody meeting dead friends and everybody in fact remaining very much alive and whole.

Even so. A tiny boon is still a boon. She tugs her bangs straight and walks a little more briskly to go and get her morning coffee than she did the previous day.


	8. End of the line

_reverse shibboleth_

_n. the practice of answering a cellphone with a generic “Hello?” as if you didn’t already know exactly who was calling—which is a little like the egg requirement that marketers added to early cake mixes in the 1950s, an antiquated extra step that’s only there to reassure you that it’s an authentic homecooked meal, just like grandma used to make._

*

Only one person calls Jane. Dirk prefers to type, she thinks because he's so much more used to it and because it allows him time to calculate each word's place. The two screens between them seem to make him feel more like himself. Jake either shows up unannounced in person and bowls her over or sends missives at odd times; letters, emails or the equivalent to her chat client while she's logged off. The boy simply cannot keep track of timezones sometimes.

Roxy, however, will phone her at any hour. Jane will be brushing her teeth when her phone vibrates, or she'll be asleep at four in the morning when it blares. Sometimes Roxy will call when she's cooking dinner, and Jane will balance the phone between chin and shoulder and multi-task so well she feels someone ought to be watching her and appreciating the effort. Her friend will babble, sometimes drunkenly, sometimes sober and a little tired for it. She'll talk about coding and shoes and about her dreams, whether they were good or bad; she'll ask Jane for an opinion on everything, no matter how many times Jane explains that all she knows about computers is that if they crash you turn them off and then on again.

"Who's speaking, please?" she says each time, something close to a private joke. Even when it's awfully early, emphasis on 'awful'. Even when she's still got a toothbrush stuck in her mouth and it comes out more a collection of vowels than a real word.

"Janeeeey," she'll get back, voice lilting and just a little hoarse, "it's me!" Roxy sounds delighted every time at reaching her, like she wasn't quite expecting the call to go through. Jane never quite knows how to feel about that, beyond perhaps a little sad- but she can push those thoughts to one side for the time it takes to talk about nothing in particular.


	9. Nimble

_semaphorism_

_n. a conversational hint that you have something personal to say on the subject but don’t go any further— an emphatic nod, a half-told anecdote, an enigmatic ‘I know the feeling’—which you place into conversations like those little flags that warn diggers of something buried underground: maybe a cable that secretly powers your house, maybe a fiberoptic link to some foreign country._

*

Jade can scarcely remember a time before Sburb sometimes. For all that the period in question makes up the bulk of her life she'd swear sometimes that she's been on this ship for over half of it. At times she thinks about whether this is to do with the nature of the game itself; had she felt like that before becoming god tier? But she can't tell, and it only ends in her feeling frustrated, so instead she lets the thought go.

There are some things she'll never forget, though. She has days still when her fingers feel lighter than expected, when she's surprised to look down and see them bare, brown fingers unadorned. Every now and again before sleeping she catches herself glancing around for the brightly coloured ribbons, mind automatically cataloguing and organizing what she has to do tomorrow. Even the loss of Prospit hasn't made her less likely to look towards the future.

It had been difficult back then. She prefers things now. Sometimes she feels a little bit guilty about that, because all those people back on Earth had died and it's not worth it, not at all, to feel glad her fingers are a little more nimble and her conversations with John a little less cautious. There are fewer stings in their conversations, fewer temptations to slide in unnecessary hints just to see if they hit home and he notices. It's not worth it, but she's still glad.


	10. Oh no, he's hot

_hanker sore_

_adj. finding a person so attractive it actually kinda pisses you off._

*

Dirk stares at Jake.

It's weird, seeing him in the flesh, he doesn't mind admitting- at least privately. He's so _much_ is the thing. Jake's fuckin' huge for a start, a good five and a half inches taller than Dirk and a hell of a lot broader too. That hadn't ever really registered over the internet, and his voice is loud, so much louder than Dirk had ever expected, even knowing that Jake was a ridiculous, over-earnest dork. In retrospect, he set himself up for this surprise. Exclamation marks and embarrassingly unironic roleplaying tags did not an indoor voice make.

Dirk continues staring at Jake as he alchemizes more shit than they could ever want or need, taking in the shorts, way too small and probably supposed to be that length anyway. They're neon green and have LEDs on them. The holster, which he swears has been bedazzled, probably by Roxy when drunk out of her mind. There's a wonky black thing that might be a cat after being run over, anyway, which seems like Roxy's work. He has a gun easily half his size cradled lovingly in his hands. It has every colour known to mankind on it.

Dirk would feel outclassed, except Dirk knows that Jake _likes_ this shit more than anything except his shitty, shitty films. Actual piss-your-pants glee is written across Jake's face while he looks upon the monstrosities he has wrought and feels no shame whatsoever.

He's still really hot.

It takes every ounce of self-respect Dirk has left not to go scream into a pillow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry, but this is all I can think when it comes to in-game Dirk/Jake. Can you even imagine how embarrassed for himself Dirk is? Jeez.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [secluded fantasies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/514241) by [ender](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ender/pseuds/ender)




End file.
